AUTOS ON MONDAY/Design; A Face, but Not the Look, to Change at Porsche

CHANGES of leadership in the design studio at Porsche occur about as frequently as Brood X cicadas emerge to conduct their noisy rituals of renewal. In the modern era -- since the arrival of the 911 in 1964 -- the company has had only three chief designers.

When Michael Mauer, now the head of design at Saab, takes over this fall, he will be the fourth. Harm Lagaay, Porsche's design chief since 1989, retires July 1.

Mr. Lagaay, 57, leaves the job with three versions of the 911 model to his credit, departing just as the latest generation of the iconic sports car arrives. Those cars, together with the company's new $440,000 supercar, the Carrera GT, cap a tenure that would be the envy of any designer.

''I think I am at the top of my career,'' Mr. Lagaay said in a recent telephone interview. ''I have achieved the mission I was given,'' he said.

That mission was to bring order to the company's model line, which today includes the lower-priced Boxster convertible and the Cayenne S.U.V. in addition to several variations of the 911. When Mr. Lagaay took over as Porsche's design chief, he said, the company's models had little relation to each other.

Mr. Lagaay's job, the dream of every schoolchild who has scribbled a car in the margins of a textbook, is considered by some to be the toughest design post in the industry because of the company's stature and cumulative successes. Porsche fans are so passionate that whenever a car is updated, they seem to find either too much continuity or too much advancement.

''Any new model divides the enthusiasts between those who want only the glorious past and those who are open to the new,'' said Carl Magnusson, the design director at Knoll, the furniture maker, who is also a longtime Porsche owner.

Mr. Lagaay's success at balancing company tradition with progressive design on recent models is a noteworthy achievement. ''What for over 20 years was perceived by the company as a straitjacket is now recognized as a decisive market advantage,'' said Bernd Polster, a historian of design trends. ''Porsches seem apparently timeless.''

The tradition of the company -- a methodical evolution of style rather than radical shifts of design direction -- has led some to describe the Porsche job as that of a curator or a custodian.

''It is not a burden,'' Mr. Lagaay said of the legacy. ''They always use the term glacial to describe our change. We change, but in our way, not impulsively.''

Managing the pace of development for future Porsche designs will fall to the German-born Mr. Mauer, 41, whose career before Saab included responsibility for the first-generation Mercedes-Benz SLK roadster as well as for the company's A-Class and Smart models. He managed the Mercedes advanced design studio in Tokyo before going to Saab in 2000, and last year added the responsibility for G.M.'s European studio in Gothenburg, Sweden.

At Porsche, Mr. Mauer will need to plan for the addition of a long-discussed fourth model to the line, which industry sources say will be a sedan. He will at least have the benefit of a master plan formulated by Mr. Legaay in the 1990's and set into action by the debut of the design study for the Boxster in 1993. The production version of the Boxster was introduced in 1996, at a time when the company was also modernizing its production methods and improving quality.

In 2003, Porsche added the Cayenne S.U.V., developed with Volkswagen, as a kind of market flywheel, intended to even out the effects of fluctuations in sports car sales with economic conditions. The Cayenne created controversy among Porsche traditionalists. ''It is growing on people, I think,'' Mr. Lagaay said of the S.U.V., whose stance and face suggest, to some viewers, a wolverine.

One example of the challenges faced by Mr. Lagaay is found in the headlight shared by the Boxster and the current 911 as a cost-saving measure. He calls it a free form design, but the German auto press called it the spiegelei, or fried egg. Combining multiple beams and signals in a single unit, the lamp assembly has been criticized for resembling an eye with its corner stretched unnaturally.

The evolution of the 911 has stayed essentially true to a Porsche philosophy that Mr. Lagaay sees focused on sculpture and proportion. His latest version abandons the fried egg and returns to the oval headlights that formed the face of earlier 911's. It is widely seen as return to the classic 911 form. ''We change,'' Mr. Lagaay said. ''But we change in a different way.''

Porsche's reputation as an inward-looking engineering and design hothouse can be traced to the company's earliest days. Founder Ferdinand Porsche assembled his core team when he formed an engineering firm in 1931; body designer Erwin Komenda was with him when the company shaped Hitler's KdF-Wagen into the VW Beetle, and he surreptitiously experimented with sports versions as early as 1939.

The first car to carry the Porsche brand name arrived in 1948. By the late 1950's, Ferdinand Porsche's grandson, F.A. Porsche, who was known as Butzi, was the company's primary designer.

But the company has often reached outside for designers, too. Mr. Lagaay was hired by Tony Lapine, an American protégé of Harley Earl who came to Porsche from Opel in 1969. Mr. Lagaay, who was born in the Netherlands, was assigned to work on the 924, the controversial front-engine Porsche. He left for Ford in 1977, where he contributed to the designs of the Scorpio and Sierra sedans sold in Europe, and later BMW, where he designed the Z1 sports car before returning to Porsche in 1989.

Mr. Mauer, who grew up in Germany, worked at Mercedes-Benz on the A-Class, SL and Smart cars. He is credited with the design of the original SLK, whose striking proportions, wrap-around tail lights and hood with twin bulges earned wide admiration. At Saab, Mr. Mauer has helped to preserve the company's tradition of unconventional but utilitarian layouts with the 9-3X design study for an S.U.V. in 2002.

In an interview at the Detroit auto show last January, Mr. Mauer sketched a Saab grille along with those of other European luxury marques. ''We've given Saab a face,'' he said in explaining his quick pen strokes on an available pad. ''It says proudly, 'I am a Saab.' Now we want to make the cars that say, 'I am a Saab, get out of my way,''' Mr. Mauer said.

''We needed an outside view,'' Mr. Lagaay said of the choice of Mr. Mauer. ''He is very professional. He has a background at a design tradition of Mercedes that we admire, and he understands our design philosophy.''